A Horror Story

It was a cold, dark September morning when I arrived at the house that I and a few others had rented for a month. The first thing I noticed was the surroundings. The trees were enormous and eerily dark—so dark you could almost feel their threatening stares as they seemed to whisper to each other. It’s just my imagination, I told myself, and my gaze caught on something that looked like a fountain. I wasn’t sure, though, because it was overgrown with a green, algae-like slime. A faint shiver crept through my body and, trying to quiet my fearful thoughts, I looked up at the house.

It looked like something straight out of a horror movie—dark and decayed, with paint peeling off in strips. The only light came from a few candles in two of the windows. Great, I thought. A power outage on top of everything. Inside, I cursed Soul, who had rented the place—Soul with his curiosity and hunger for the unknown. No one else would have had the idea to rent a house that was said to be haunted, but of course Soul wanted to check whether it was true. So he claimed, anyway. I suspected he just wanted to scare the rest of us so he could feel macho, the only one not frightened by wind and creaking floorboards.

I forced myself to move and followed the gravel path to the front door. Instead of ringing the bell, I decided to sneak in and scare Soul—give him a taste of his own medicine. Yeah, right. Sneaking. The door groaned and screamed as I opened it slowly. One step, and I was inside. To my surprise, when I closed the door it made no sound at all—not even the smallest creak. Perfectly normal, perfectly normal, I chanted to myself.

I tried to look around the nearly pitch-black hallway. Why hasn’t anyone lit any candles here? I wondered, but a faint prickling at the back of my neck told me they probably had, and the draft leaking through the window frames had extinguished them. After a while my eyes adjusted and I could make out the hallway’s strange shape: a round hall inside a square house.

This was getting more and more frightening, so I decided to go back outside and wait for someone else to arrive. I didn’t trust Soul to calm me down; he’d only make it worse. I turned toward the door I had come through—except there was no door.

Jesus, I thought. Fear must be playing tricks on me. I must have moved since I came in; the door has to be somewhere nearby. I traced the wall, first to the right, then to the left, but I couldn’t find a door. Anxiety spread through me like wildfire. I made a full circle around the hall—still no door.

I must be asleep, I thought. This is just a nightmare. I pinched my arm to wake up, but nothing happened. I was trapped in a round hallway with no lights and no doors.

When I finally decided to climb out through a window, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a dim light spreading at the far end of the hall. I felt myself about to faint—and everything went black.

I began to come to. I was lying on a dark red leather sofa in a room that, strangely enough, was lit by a ceiling lamp. Where am I? I thought. Then I heard whispering voices and quickly closed my eyes so whoever—or whatever—it was wouldn’t know I was awake.

“She’s been out for a long time,” one voice said.

“Yeah… maybe it was unnecessary to put out all the candles. I didn’t think anyone would get that scared,” another voice replied.

Slowly, I realized the whispering voices belonged to my friends. I opened my eyes and glared at them. Daft was the first to notice I was awake.

“How are you? Are you hurt? I’m sorry! That wasn’t the idea at all. How are you? Do you want anything? I can get water. How are you?” he rattled off at what felt like 230 kilometers per hour.

Moln came over to check that I was okay, then turned and gave Soul a furious look. Soul had the sense to look guilty and explained what had happened. Of course it hadn’t been meant to scare anyone (sure, I thought dryly)—it had just been a joke. Soul had turned off the lights and placed candles around the house to make it look a little creepier for the rest of us. But he hadn’t accounted for the house’s miserable condition, so he hadn’t realized that almost all the candles had been blown out by drafts. The hall—now that I saw it properly lit—was a tricky room. The doors were built to blend into the walls so well that, if you didn’t know they were there, you’d never find them. They opened with the press of a hidden button. The light I’d seen had been Soul entering from the door that led to the downstairs corridor, holding a candle.

After I’d yelled at them for a while, I calmed down and could even admit it had been a good prank. I was grateful not everyone had been there to witness me fainting. Speaking of everyone—where were the others? We were supposed to meet at seven. I checked my watch and realized it was already eight.

The others had decided to carpool, Moln said, and around half past seven Sanne had called to say they’d be late because Ailsaiona hadn’t shown up. They were going to swing by her apartment and wake her. We sat talking about what we were even going to do during our month here; the stupidity of taking a vacation in September—and spending it in a crumbling haunted house—also came up.

Suddenly we heard noises outside. Daft looked out the window and shouted happily that the others had arrived. We went to meet them in the hallway. There was Sanne, 029, Blå, and Cal. But where was Ailsaiona? I looked again and asked.

“She never showed,” they said. “Didn’t call, didn’t message. We went to her place and her roommate opened the door—half asleep—and said she’d already left. She had errands to run first. The roommate was supposed to call us, but she overslept. She was really sorry and said Ailsaiona should already be here.”

“Well, she isn’t,” Moln said.

Since Ailsaiona was a peculiar little girl, none of us reacted that strongly. She did things her own way, and what she was really up to, none of us ever knew. She’d show up when she was done—whatever it was.

Morning turned into noon, and lunch was served: sushi. I hate sushi. I nibbled on sandwiches while everyone else ate. After lunch we played board games. Moln and I won both Geni and Trivial Pursuit, while Sanne and Blå took poker— the guys didn’t stand a chance.

Day slid into evening, and now we were getting worried. Ailsaiona still hadn’t shown up, and we hadn’t heard a word from her. We discussed where she could be and why she hadn’t contacted us. Soul declared irritably that we should forget about her. If she couldn’t keep time—or at least call—then she shouldn’t even be welcome when and if she did show up.

Later we started discussing sleeping arrangements. Since Daft and Moln were a couple, they would obviously share, which meant at least two others would have to share rooms with someone of the opposite sex. For fairness, it ended up one girl and one guy per room: Blå with Cal, Sanne with Soul, and me with 029. Cal complained that his wife wouldn’t like that, so he and Soul swapped, and Blå and Sanne swapped, making it girl-girl and guy-guy.

I went down to the hall, fetched my bag, and went up to the bedroom I’d been assigned. I tossed my suitcase onto the double bed and looked around. My eyes swept over wicker chairs, an old dresser, a mahogany wardrobe—and stopped on a strange painting. It seemed like a blend of innocence and dread, light and darkness, hope and despair. I couldn’t quite pinpoint why, because the painting showed the house as it had looked when it was newly built. Maybe it was the shadows by the shed (now long gone), or the dark, hanging trees to the right of it. A small shiver ran through me anyway.

I jumped when 029 entered. We unpacked, chose sides of the bed (he, naturally, slept closest to the door), then went downstairs for a late snack and to hear the house’s story.

Soul said the house had been built in the early 1700s by a wealthy man who’d moved here from America. He married and had three children—three sons. People around him believed he was happy and couldn’t understand why, at twenty-six, he hanged himself in the shed. His wife became depressed and spent most of her time at the bedroom window, staring down at the shed. If it hadn’t been for the money and the servants, the family would have collapsed.

As it was, the sons did fine—at least during childhood. The eldest died in a boating accident at twenty. The youngest disappeared and was never heard from again. Their misfortunes didn’t seem to affect the wife. Nor did the happiness that filled the house when the middle son married at twenty-one, bringing friends and love into the home—and later two children.

After a few years the son grew bitter and irritable. He claimed all his friends were parasites, his wife a whore, his children not his. He went down to the basement and shot himself. A curse seemed to rest over the family: none of the descendants reached an age higher than thirty-two, while those who married in were forced to watch spouses, children, and grandchildren die by accident or suicide.

Around the mid-1900s the family line died out. The house was managed by a foundation created by the last descendant to preserve it. The caretakers, though, seemed to be drunks—if the condition of the house was any indication. Rumors of hauntings began when the last descendant died. He had come running down from the attic one summer night with terror on his face, whispering the words: “Look for the missing link,” as he took his final breath.

And so the rumors lived on, fed by young people who—like us—insisted on staying here. They claimed to have seen and experienced all sorts of things; some had been so broken by it that they would spend the rest of their lives locked away in psychiatric wards.

After that story, it felt grim to go to bed. I think each of us was deeply grateful not to be sleeping alone. We all went up together to the hallway where the bedrooms were, then gradually peeled off with forced, cheerful goodnights that no one truly felt. Moln and Daft disappeared first, then Sanne and Blå. Before leaving Cal and Soul at their door, I made Soul promise he wouldn’t try to scare anyone during the night. Our room was farthest away, and I was grateful for 029’s company on the last stretch.

Once inside, I was even more grateful for the folding screen in the corner—it offered privacy to change. I slipped behind it and changed into pajamas while 029 changed in front of it, then I climbed into bed. I yawned and turned off the bedside lamp.

It didn’t take long to fall asleep. But in the middle of the night I woke to a strange sound. The shadows in the room, the darkness in the corners, made me far less grateful for the screen. It looked as if someone were crouching behind it.

Softly I whispered, “Is someone there?” No answer.

I reached out slowly to turn on the lamp when suddenly it felt as if something stroked my forearm. I jerked my arm back and crawled under the duvet. It felt like someone was watching me. Cold with fear, I inched toward 029, taking comfort in the fact that he was there.

Then the lamp clicked on and a groggy 029 asked what I was doing. In the light it all felt humiliating. Of course there was nothing there. The touch on my arm must have been a draft. The shadows were just shadows, and the eyes watching me just imagination. Stammering, I tried to explain, insisting that I’d crawled close out of fear—and nothing else. 029 looked doubtful, but accepted it. We lay back down and eventually fell asleep again at opposite edges of the bed.

The rest of the night passed without incident. When I woke in the morning, I felt safe—embarrassed, but safe. Everyone gathered in the kitchen for breakfast, and I noticed Sanne looked utterly exhausted.

“What’s wrong, Sanne?” I asked.

She said she’d barely slept because every time she turned off the light and closed her eyes, she felt a heavy weight at the foot of the bed. The others chuckled skeptically, and 029 asked me to tell everyone what had happened to me. I explained in a low, half-embarrassed voice—but when I reached the part about seeking comfort against 029, I blushed and fell silent. 029 laughed and teased me, then described his own experience of the night.

The more the others laughed at the image of me pressed up against a confused, half-awake 029, the redder I became. Soon jokes about why I’d crawled under his blanket were flying. I gave up trying to understand what had happened to Sanne and me. Once they’d stopped laughing, I didn’t want to remind them.

The rest of breakfast passed as we discussed what to do that day. Cal, Blå, Sanne, and 029 wanted to explore the surroundings. Moln, Daft, and I wanted to explore the house. We split up. Soul stayed behind to guide us and show where things had happened. He showed us the basement where the man had shot himself. Room after room: suicides, suspected accidents. We walked through every bedroom where we ourselves were sleeping and he said nothing, which made me feel safer. But when we reached my room, he told us a murder had happened there. Not a suicide. A murder.

Revulsion crawled over my skin. Was I sleeping in the only room where something that horrible had happened? I didn’t want to seem cowardly, so I pushed the thought away, telling myself ghosts didn’t exist and my room was no worse than anyone else’s.

Then it was time to go up to the attic—dark, cold, and menacing. Anyone who has been in an old attic on a chilly night knows the feeling, but this one was beyond it: suffocatingly eerie. The ceiling was crisscrossed with old, blackened beams. You could almost feel how much pain and evil they had absorbed from those who’d died there.

I had never seen so much cobwebbing in one place. Broken, pale children’s toys lay in corners under thick dust. An old rocking horse seemed to rock by itself after we stepped up there. And an even older mirror hung crooked on one wall—its glass dark as night, as if it hid terrifying visions behind the blackness. In the far end, a crystal lamp made me cry out when it suddenly chimed, as if stroked by an invisible hand.

The air turned colder. I wanted out—instantly. This time I wasn’t alone. Everyone shifted with discomfort. Soul said he could tell us the attic’s story downstairs over coffee, and we half ran down the stairs.

In the kitchen, with a pot of fresh coffee, Soul began.

The attic had always been a story of its own, partly because it wasn’t built until the early 1800s. But the strangest thing was that it was feared even before it was finished. Unless the need was great—fetching or storing something—no one went up there unless forced. After the attic was built, fewer suicides happened elsewhere in the house. The desperate seemed drawn up to the attic by an unseen force.

The first of many to die there was the one who built it: the bitter, cruel Insoh, one of the few in the family history described as not only strange but genuinely psychopathic from childhood. He was avoided like the plague, and even his mother could find nothing redeeming in him. In truth, she was probably the one most afraid. At thirteen he began planning the attic. At sixteen he started building. At twenty he finished. One week later they found him dead there. Whether he killed himself or someone else did it, no one knew—and no one cared. The important thing was that he was gone.

Insoh’s twin sister, Sikcud, was the only one who went to the attic willingly. After her brother’s death she sat there for hours every day, talking to herself—or to someone only she could see. When she began speaking of Insoh as if he were alive, everyone understood she would soon follow him. Exactly one year after his death, Sikcud ended her life. A long-serving housekeeper found her on the attic floor in a snow-white dress, lying on a blanket with a cyanide bottle beside her right hand and a devilish grin on her face.

It was also in the attic that the only child murder happened. In 1885, Leakrom decided to end not only her own life but her children’s. In a farewell letter she wrote that the curse would end then and there. She took her two children up to the attic, slit the throat of one and shot the other, then shot herself. The child who was shot survived—punctured lung—and the gunshot sent the household rushing up, saving the child’s life.

The stories Soul told that day were enough to raise the hair on a corpse, and the images his words conjured have been glued to my mind ever since.

Suddenly the door flew open and the others returned. They spoke of strange sounds in the woods and shadows moving beneath the surface of the dead lake. In the end, many of us agreed we might have bitten off more than we could chew and should leave—take our vacation somewhere else. Soul and 029 refused. They insisted we were over-sensitive and imagining things. After arguing back and forth, we agreed to give it one more night.

The day passed slowly. The only thing worth mentioning was when Moln tripped on a rug and fell hard on the basement stairs, bruising herself and cutting her left forearm. The cut wasn’t deep but it was long. Some of us suggested she go to the hospital (I think most of us were searching for any excuse to leave), but Blå, who was trained as a nurse, cleaned it and bandaged it.

Evening came. We gathered in what had once been a sitting room and sat in front of a lit fireplace. Then all the lights went out—everything except the fire. A power outage.

We had a choice: stay in the house with candles as our only light, or go outside into the pitch-black unknown. I think the fact that none of us had thought to bring a flashlight decided it. At least inside we had some light. Outside, one gust would plunge us into total darkness.

We sat in the dimness, speaking almost in whispers, as if afraid someone in the darkness beyond the room might hear us.

“Listen,” Blå whispered, her voice tight with fear. “Listen—don’t you hear that?”

We all fell silent. After a moment I heard it: footsteps on the stairs.

Footsteps? We were all in the same room.

I curled deeper into my armchair, pulling my feet up beneath me, trying to make myself as small as possible. Looking around, I saw I wasn’t alone. Most of us had shrunk inward, away from the doorway, frozen.

The footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs and drew closer and closer to the room. With my heart in my throat, I heard them stop just beyond the doorway.

Not a sound in the room. Not even breathing.

Seconds ticked by. The only movement was our eyes as we watched each other.

Cal was the first to move. Slowly, cautiously, he crept toward the door. At the threshold he hesitated, then stepped into the hallway. I half expected him to drop dead with blood spraying everywhere. Instead he let out a small, surprised sound.

There was nothing out there. No ghost. No person. Not even an animal.

It was becoming too strange. If it hadn’t been for the darkness outside—and that awful forest—I would have run, and kept running until I reached civilization. As it was, I had to be grateful I wasn’t alone in that place.

The moment killed the mood. One by one we went to bed, trying to sleep away the remaining hours until morning came and we could leave.

That night passed without incident. When I woke to sunlight in my face, everything felt less important, and I half convinced myself someone had been pranking us. At breakfast Moln raised the same thought, and we agreed to try cleaning up the property—maybe even repaint the house—so the sense of dread would vanish.

So we began. 029, Cal, and Blå drove into the nearest town to buy paint while the rest of us cleared the yard. We busied ourselves with everything except the fountain-like thing. We hoped the others would return before we had to deal with it, so we could claim we were too busy painting.

Eventually we couldn’t avoid it any longer. Soul and I approached it together. Every step felt like a step toward doom. At last we reached it and began pulling out slime with our rakes. I didn’t want to look while I lifted and tossed, but it’s hard to work blind, so I glanced now and then. That’s why it took me a moment to realize what lay on the rake I had just raised above the surface.

A hand.

It looked like a human hand.

I dropped the rake and ran screaming. Soul shouted after me, asking what it was. I tried to explain but only managed thin, squeaking noises, so I pointed with a shaking finger toward the fountain.

Soul began lifting muck from the spot I had cleared. It didn’t take long before a hand appeared again. He called for Daft to help. Slowly, grimly, they climbed down into the fountain and dug with their hands until they pulled up Ailsaiona’s chalk-white, blood-drained body.

My whole body trembled at the sight, and my stomach turned inside out. I saw Moln collapse and Daft rush to her, and then I bent forward and vomited until there was nothing left. Shaking and weak, I tried to force my thoughts into sense. What is happening? What happened to Ailsaiona? Why was she in the fountain? How did she get here? When did she arrive? Who killed her? How? How do we get out?

Daft lifted the fainted Moln and carried her into the house. Soul and I followed. Moln was laid on the same sofa I had lain on the first day. Reality caught up like a wave.

Ailsaiona was murdered. Someone had killed her and thrown her in the fountain to keep her hidden. Who? One of us? Someone else? How many people knew we were coming here?

We didn’t get answers, but we decided to pack and leave as soon as the others returned—which happened just as Moln woke.

I ran outside to tell them what we had found when a scream tore through the air. It was Blå, who had discovered the body where Soul had dragged it onto the grass. When I reached them, Blå sat in a heap on the ground, shaking, tears streaming down her face. 029 tried clumsily to comfort her, patting her back and whispering, “There, there.” Cal stood utterly still, staring at the body as if his mind couldn’t process it.

I stopped, helpless. I didn’t know what to do, how to help, what to say.

Soul came out and took command. Half-shouting, he ordered everyone to hurry inside and pack so we could get out. Finally Cal snapped out of whatever held him. In a trembling voice he said, “Get out? And how exactly did you plan to do that?”

I stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “We have cars,” I said.

Cal burst into wild laughter, laughter that wouldn’t stop.

After a while, 029 whispered, “Forget the cars.”

“Forget?” Soul barked. “What do you mean, forget?”

“They don’t work,” 029 whispered. “We had to walk the last two miles just to get back. And when we got here, we thought we’d borrow one of your cars to fetch paint—but none of them start.”

“NONE OF THEM WORK,” 029 shouted, desperate.

I shook my head as if to clear it. Three cars. One of them had to start. We had to get out.

“Can’t we walk?” I asked.

“Walk?” Soul snapped. “It’s more than twelve miles to the nearest house.”

“Anything is better than being here,” I whispered, tears thick in my throat.

We forced ourselves to calm down and went inside, then gathered in the sitting room to find a plan. Since we couldn’t leave and no one would miss us for nearly a month, we had to make the best of it. First we convinced ourselves—and each other—that nothing was wrong with the house, and that Ailsaiona had been murdered by someone who had hated her in particular. Then we went through the whole house, checking every window was shut and locked—just in case.

When we reached my bedroom, I felt a gnawing certainty that something was wrong. Something was there that didn’t belong.

029 opened the door and stepped in. I heard a deep inhale.

I don’t want to know, I thought. I don’t want to know.

“But what—” someone said. “How the hell—”

I gave up. Better to face it. I took a deep breath and stepped inside.

At first I saw nothing. Then I saw it.

On my pillow lay a bloodied child’s shoe. And beside it, on a note, was my name—Aditu.

My legs nearly gave out. The room darkened at the edges.

No, I thought. I can’t faint again.

I forced myself to breathe and sat on the edge of the bed. Then I looked up at the others. Which one of them was guilty? Who could be so cruel—to pull a prank like that after everything that had happened? Even if it had been done before Ailsaiona, it was cruel. So cruel.

My eyes filled with tears. Through them I saw that everyone looked as shocked as I felt. No one looked guilty. And yet the fact remained: someone had done it.

“I refuse to sleep here,” I cried. “I refuse, I refuse—I REFUSE!”

Soul and Cal exchanged a quick glance, and then they offered to switch rooms with me. I accepted instantly, stuffed my things into my bag, and ran from the room.

After changing rooms, eating, and enduring yet another evening of board games (the guys lost, as usual), it was time for bed. The mood had felt heavy on the earlier nights, but now it was worse—so dense you could almost hold it, roll it in your hand, taste it.

I changed and lay down without studying the room’s details. Nothing was allowed to feed my mind. Tonight I would sleep until morning, nothing else.

At the smallest sound I jolted, curling up tighter, squeezing my eyes shut. Eventually I fell asleep—only to wake what felt like moments later with the certainty that something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

I lay completely still, eyes closed, breathing as quietly as I could. If something was there, I wanted it to go away. If I pretended not to notice, maybe it would leave.

The air grew colder. And colder.

I smelled something—something like rot and damp earth, something that stung my nose.

I couldn’t stand it. I had to open my eyes and prove it was my imagination. It had to be my imagination.

Slowly, slowly, I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling. I turned my gaze toward the foot of the bed. Nothing. My eyes swept across the right side. Nothing.

But when I looked left, I understood.

Someone stood beside the head of my bed, so close I could have reached out and touched him.

Oh, help me, I thought. Please—someone help me.

The figure moved. Closer. Closer.

My mind went blank. I squeezed my eyes shut, opened my mouth, and screamed with everything in my lungs.

Within seconds, not only 029 but everyone else burst into the room.

And that was the worst part: something had stood there, something had been about to touch me, and it couldn’t have been any of them—because they were all together on the other side of the bed.

We sat in silence in the kitchen, the only room that still felt safe. A coldness clung inside me, making me shiver and chatter my teeth. Sanne looked across the table at Blå and asked if she would come with her to fetch a blanket for me.

“Of course,” Blå said, and the two of them left.

Moln tried to speak to me, but I couldn’t form a sound. She settled for holding me, stroking my hair to soothe me—comfort that felt like it would never return.

We waited. Minutes passed. No one came back.

Finally Cal and 029 went to look for them. After a while the men returned—029 first, a puzzled expression on his face, and Cal carrying Sanne in his arms.

He set Sanne down in a corner on the floor. She sat curled up, staring, not moving, not speaking, not blinking. Cal said they had found her like that. But there was no trace of Blå.

Something was terribly, terribly wrong. But how could we get out? How could we survive if we weren’t even safe in pairs?

We stayed in the kitchen until the sun rose and it felt safe enough to sleep. No one dared sleep in that room again. I slept with Moln and Daft. 029 and Sanne stayed with the others.

We hadn’t slept long when Soul woke us. Sanne was gone.

He said he’d woken to a door creaking. When he looked around, she had vanished. He’d run out into the corridor—it was empty and silent. After waking the others, they searched nearby bedrooms. Nothing. Not even in ours, the last one they checked.

How could she disappear so completely? Where had she gone?

I didn’t want to leave the room, but I didn’t want to stay either. I wanted only to be far away.

I began seeing movements in every corner and hearing whispers beside my ear wherever I went. We returned to the kitchen but realized we couldn’t stay there for three more weeks. We went outside again, hoping somehow one of the cars might start.

None did.

While we were outside, Moln decided to go into the woods to relieve herself—anything to avoid being alone somewhere inside the house. I offered to go with her, but she laughed and said she could handle it. It was midday, she pointed out, and she wouldn’t go far.

I watched her go, listening to branches crack as she disappeared from sight, tracking her by sound. After a while the cracking stopped; she’d found a place. After a while longer, the silence became heavy.

It felt wrong. Very wrong.

Together we walked toward where we’d last heard her. In a small clearing behind thick bushes, we found her.

Like Ailsaiona, she was drained of blood. Dead.

I smothered a scream in my hand. We all stood frozen.

All but Daft.

He didn’t freeze—he ran, screaming into the woods. The rest of us were too shocked to follow.

It felt like hours before 029 decided to lift Moln’s body from the cold ground and said we should go back to the house. Back there we remembered Ailsaiona’s body. We meant to bring both bodies up to the attic. We had to put them somewhere.

But Ailsaiona’s body was gone. Not where we’d left it. Nowhere.

By then hopelessness was breaking us. We decided to ignore it until the body reappeared—if it ever did.

As we approached the attic stairs, we heard a scraping sound above. I refused to go up. 029 and Cal went, but came down quickly with the explanation.

Daft had hung himself. The scraping had been his feet against the floor.

029 sat at the foot of the attic stairs and said he couldn’t do it anymore. There was no point. We were being taken one by one. He might as well die there as anywhere. Soul and Cal tried to argue, but I couldn’t deny that 029 sounded rational: no matter how fast we ran, death caught up. Why waste the strength?

After nearly an hour, Soul snapped. He said 029 could sit there and die if he wanted. Soul would fight as long as he could.

He grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the kitchen, shouting for Cal to come. Cal said he would stay with 029.

“Idiots,” Soul muttered. “Goddamn idiots.”

In the kitchen we sat in our chairs and waited, the clock ticking. After a few hours, what we had feared happened. Cal came rushing in, terror carved into his face, mute, wild-eyed. He tried to explain, but his gestures were incoherent, like a madman’s.

Soul decided to follow him and see what was wrong.

“No,” I said. “Not a chance.”

And I wouldn’t sit alone in the kitchen either. It felt safest to be outside—despite what had happened to Moln.

In the hallway we split. I watched Soul and Cal go, a deep sense of loss in my chest. When they vanished from sight, I ran out the front door.

Outside, I stood in the yard, far from the fountain, and waited. I saw shadows flicker past a window in one room. What are they doing in there? I thought, focusing my gaze.

The shadows grew larger until, finally, a face appeared—one I had never seen before. It wasn’t any of us. It was a face of pure evil.

I did what any sane person would have done by then. I ran.

To this day I don’t know how I made the twelve miles to the nearest neighbor. I remember only faintly stumbling through the door, begging two bewildered pensioners to call the police.

What happened to the others remains shrouded in darkness. The police found our cars and our luggage, but not a trace of a body.

I have never set foot near that house again, and never will. But the memories—the images—stay with me. They keep me awake at night and make me flinch at the smallest shadow in daylight.

Somehow the house, the family, the history became an obsession. And no matter how much Soul knew back then, I know many times more now. I also know the answer to the missing link.

Leakrom, the mad mother, was right about one thing: to stop the curse, the bloodline must be wiped out. What she didn’t know was that the family would not die with her. The vanished son had his own family. He didn’t live long, but long enough to pass on his blood through a long line of descendants—of which I am the last.

I wonder what dreadful act my ancestor committed to place such a curse on everyone who came after him. But that riddle seems to have no answer. I must live with my friends’ deaths on my conscience—and with the knowledge that everything that happens at the house is because I am too afraid to leave this world behind.